Future Plains

Life courses through many challenges either succeeded in or failed. I think of them all like a mountain slope, like a desert, like a moonscape, all like nature is I guess. This poem is about the future and the way forward.


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See the misty mountains for a moment ‘fore they close away
Cliffs they shielding, wet as if struck from the Earth this day
Trees they gripping, their hearts lurching looking down, rushed
And these eyes unblinking, face cold and flushed
They can’t imagine the future plains beyond these mountains
Cause life is like this fogged in cathedral full of flowing fountains
You can’t see speeding ahead them days coming alive
They aren’t a road winding and curving with T’s and Y’s
No lefts or rights along some golden path like books may speak
But highland steppes sleeping below in shadow of these shrouded peaks
Any way forward or backward, a path for you to forge anew
Any direction you choose the leaves, the needles, the herbs of life you brew
And ahead in peril some may go, most that do see it too dark and looming
but those few who win out, their toll that of a burnt-forest-flower blooming
so much sacrifice for them to become, to rise above and seize the challenges
for the same-o same-o breeds the weak, the bright eyed sparks come with
change
So as seen high up atop when mist has been cooked away by sunray
where long valleys and oceans, lakes and rivers meet the morning with the day
A man looks outward toward future plains, a smile ensnared
and he thinks big thoughts and thinks he sees it all out there
but the horizon is far, and everything moving, brooding in between
a great organically turning, winding, grinding, spinning machine
body trembling, knowing nothings given and what’s earned can be taken
this man cannot stand the sight, too bright and blinding, he’s forsaken
when set facing perilous path, the way is yours to be a-makin’
and covering ground does not stop, ahead must be more wilderness
with fingers gripping earth and rock, slithering forward
feet their slipping, cursing under breath that he’s no coward!
This man climbs down into the abyss